Former Brewster town administrator resigns from school building committee

Ethan Genter @EthanGenterCCT

Sunday

Jan 27, 2019 at 5:00 PMJan 28, 2019 at 6:21 AM

BREWSTER — Former Town Administrator Michael Embury has resigned from the Nauset Regional High School Building Committee after he was informed by the committee chairman that “town officials will not meet with the committee as long as (Embury is) a member.”

The resignation is the sixth so far on the 15-member committee dedicated to building a new high school, said committee Chairman Gregory Levasseur. But Levasseur said he did not know of any specific town officials who had refused to meet with the committee because of Embury’s presence.

Levasseur asked Embury to resign, he said.

“Information came that this was brewing with the town of Brewster,” Levasseur said Friday. “I don’t know names.”

Embury had resigned in June from his post as the Brewster town administrator, amid questions about the town’s financial practices. He started the job in 2015.

An investigation into Brewster’s finances is ongoing, but several accounting errors have been found in the fiscal 2018 accounts.

While Embury was the town administrator, though, he and others were appointed to the building committee based on existing laws and agreements with school officials in the four towns in the district: Eastham, Orleans, Brewster and Wellfleet. The nominees for the building committee were brought forward by the superintendent of Nauset Public Schools and approved by the Nauset Regional School Committee.

A request for comment left Friday for Nauset Public Schools Superintendent Thomas Conrad was not immediately returned, nor was a request left Sunday for Nauset Regional School Committee Chairman Chris Easley.

Embury’s latest resignation came Tuesday in an email to Lavasseur.

“The Chair brought to my attention that Brewster town officials will not meet with the committee as long as I am a member,” he wrote. “I certainly felt that my past experiences — from being the youngest financial secretary of a labor union in the country at 23, managing the planning and construction of multimillion dollar projects in Kurdistan and numerous municipal projects — would be an asset to the process.”

Embury wrote in the email to Lavasseur that "one does not have to read between the lines to see what is going on."

"I am reluctantly resigning from the committee," Embury wrote. "This project is too important to the future of our communities to have this situation to go sideways.”

He finished the email by wishing the committee luck and assured them he would be cheering for them quietly in the background.

In an email to the Times, Embury wrote he had “really nothing to add,” suggesting that Levasseur was the person to speak to because Levasseur had brought the issue to Embury’s attention.

Levasseur could not name a specific instance where a town official declined to meet with the board.

“It’s just a sense of what’s going on around here,” he said.

Interim Town Administrator Mark Forest, who came on after Embury’s resignation, and Cynthia Bingham, chair of the Select Board, said they did not know what the letter was referring to.

“I have no idea what this is all about,” Bingham said.

During her two and a half years on the Select Board, the board has not met with the committee, nor does it normally meet with the committee, she said.

A representative has come before the Select Board previously, but not the full committee, she said.

The Select Board likely wouldn’t meet with the full committee until further along on the school building timeline, Bingham said.

Forest said the town has been meeting with school officials on the project and forums by the building committee are being held this week in Brewster and other towns.

“Nauset school officials have been coming to town hall on a regular basis and keeping us informed on this project and a host of other school initiatives,” Forest wrote in an email. “They have done an outstanding job. We are looking forward to the public forum they are hosting at town hall at the end of the month.”

Even without Embury, the building committee will continue to work on the new school project.

“This project is very important to the district,” Levasseur said. Some of the other resignations came after members realized the process with the Massachusetts School Building Authority would take about five years, he said.

Levasseur asked Embury to resign to keep the project moving, he said.

“I have to deal with what I have to deal with,” Levasseur said.

— Follow Ethan Genter on Twitter: @EthanGenterCCT.

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